Reacting today to the furor caused by the revelations about the administration’s ObamaCare lies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did her best to dismiss the controversy. As far as the woman who rammed the Affordable Care Act through Congress on a party-line vote was concerned, Jonathan Gruber is a nobody who had no role in its passage. But unfortunately for her, a C-Span archival tape from 2009 was quickly uncovered that shows the former speaker citing Gruber as an authority on the bill. Ouch. But after we’re done chuckling at Pelosi’s chutzpah and calculating the impact of this latest Democratic fib on the course of the debate, this might be another moment for us to ponder just how much damage the cynical push for ObamaCare did to the fabric of American democracy.

Just to put this in perspective, here’s what Pelosi said today about Gruber while refusing to answer a question about his admissions:

I don’t know who he is and he didn’t help write our bill.

Here’s what she said in November 2009:

We’re not finished getting all of our reports back from CBO, but we’ll have a side by side to compare. But our bill brings down rates. I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill for those who seek insurance within the exchange. And our bill takes down those costs, even some now, and much less preventing the upward spiral.

Judging by Pelosi’s convenient memory loss today, the conviction among those who foisted ObamaCare on the nation that they can always count on “the stupidity of the American voter” wasn’t just something invented by Gruber.

But as with Gruber’s comments, there will be plenty of people on the left who will dismiss this as nothing but a minor kerfuffle, a footnote to the achievement of the great liberal dream of a national health-care act. But words and deeds have consequences.

The problem with ObamaCare was, as Gruber has acknowledged, that if the voters or even the Congress that voted on it had understood what was in the bill, it could not have succeeded in gaining a majority, even one without a single Republican vote. Throughout the debate over the bill and its implementation, the one consistent theme has been dishonesty. From Pelosi’s own statement that the law had to be passed for members to know what was in it, to the president’s lies about consumers keeping their coverage and doctors, to the delay in enforcing the individual mandate and other provisions, to the current debacle over Gruber, advocates of the misnamed Affordable Care Act have never stopped lying or talking down to the American people.

In the last 60 years, we have seen confidence in government and politics decline bit by bit to the current situation where politicians of both parties are about as well respected as street walkers. This was the result of a series of unfortunate decisions and scandals that started with Vietnam, continued with Watergate (and every other subsequent scandal that generally is referred to by adding the word “gate” to something), was compounded by the distorted debate about Iraq, and now seems to be reaching a crescendo with ObamaCare.

One doesn’t have to hold a particular position on any of these issues to understand that when the American people perceive they have been deceived, it hurts more than the party caught lying. It hurts confidence in democracy and the rule of law. President Obama came into office and even reelected in 2012 buoyed by a wave of optimism about the nation that his historic election as our first African-American president created. But instead of building on the confidence placed in him, he resorted to the lowest and most cynical tactics to get his way on health care. Like Gruber and Pelosi, he undoubtedly felt the ends justified the means and that if it took a few lies to get his bill passed, it would be worth it. In the course of that campaign, he and his supporters called their Tea Party opponents who had raised up in protest against this massive expansion of federal power every vile name in the book and branded them as racists. Now today, unashamed, they look back on the lies they told and tell us to just move on since the debate is supposedly over.

But whether or not it is over—and, as I argued earlier, it is far from over—the damage they’ve done to the country and the government will live on. Leader Pelosi doesn’t have amnesia but she and everyone else who took part in this disgraceful episode should be deeply ashamed.